


And I Don't Know How I Would Even Start...

by look_into_her_eyes_and



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz, Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Squip, Asexual Christine Canigula, Bisexual Jeremy Heere, F/F, F/M, Gay Michael Mell, IF I COULD TELL HER AU, M/M, Michael speaks Tagalog, christine speaks korean, i wont let that abusive ipod nano crash this good and pure fic, if ure pining in a forest will ur crush notice, jeremy speaks hebrew (kinda), maybe? - Freeform, the squip squad is trying so hard to sail this ship, tutoring au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-09 23:33:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12286557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/look_into_her_eyes_and/pseuds/look_into_her_eyes_and
Summary: "She said... there's no feeling like how your smile lights up the room, you make everything glow around you!""Oh. Really? When'd she say that?""While we were working on... sine graphs!"Michael is Christine's math tutor.Michael has also become Jeremy's love tutor.???another If I Could Tell Her AU





	And I Don't Know How I Would Even Start...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [canweorderpizza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/canweorderpizza/gifts).



> hey!!  
> big thanks to @canweorderpizza and @reptilianraven for inspiration and proofreading, i love both of you so much!!1!
> 
> All translations of non-english words will be at the bottom

Michael was going to _die_. Michael was going to die in the middle of math class and the cause: anaphlyactic shock due to an allergy to triangles along with a severe case of bored-itis.

“Today, Sirs and Misses, today is the ill-fated day of… tutor assignments!” Mr. Reyes slapped a faded green sheet on every desk, not bothering to look down. “Every student in this class with an average under 3.0 will be paired with a student with an average over 3.5 in some attempt to pull the curve over a few points and make you anti-social messes of hormones get outside your comfort zones. Now, because I know that none of you will actually check which tutors you have, I’m going to read them aloud.”

The class groaned all at once. Honestly, more people would’ve paid attention if he had just launched straight into trig proofs, but once Reyes started on a train of thought, that little fucker was choo-chooing all the way till the end of the period.

“Listen up, people, because I’m not repeating the pairs again! I’ll say the tutor’s name first, and then their… tutoree.”

“Dillinger, Goranski!”

“Rolan, Heere!”

“Beck, Murphy!”  
Who? Oh god, Michael was too tired to remember anything, especially in 6th period Trig. His name would be near the end anyways. He had a hazy sensation of his glasses being pulled down his face by a pair of too-big hands. Maybe his? Maybe it was time for a….

“Michael! Michael, wake up, wake up! Reyes called your name like, two minutes ago!”

Guuuh. That nap was too short. “Wha?”

“Check the- check the sheet!” Jeremy was shaking, but not with fear, maybe something more like… excitement? 

“Alright, alright, calm down, Jere.” Michael flipped the sheet over and squinted at the patchy black type. Jesus, this printer was not made for people with glasses! 

“Uuuh… Everett, Lampeter, Morales.. alrighty, here it is! Give me a drumroll, maestro!”

Jeremy grinned (God, his smile beamed) and pattered the desk to an impatient beat. “And Michael’s new tutee- stop giggling, it’s a real word, I just looked it up, Mr. Smarty-Pants-Dictionary- is…..”

Michael finally found his name halfway down the list and dragged his eyes over to see-

MELL, CANIGULA

Oh shit.  
——————————————————————————————————————————

“CHRISTINE?! Of the other 20 kids in our Trig class, you had to get Christine, who, oh, just so happens to be the only person I've _ever_ liked?!” 

“ _Hay_ _nako_ , Jeremy, it’s not like this was my fault! You have like, a D, so you wouldn’t’ve gotten to make love over sweet sweet quadratic equations anyway-“

“Yeah, but like, it would’ve been better if it was just some rando instead of my best friend-  
“Gay best friend, Jere!”  
“-tutoring my- I mean, Christine!”

The boys were settled in their respective beanbags in Michael’s basement, Michael consuming Funyuns at an alarming rate and Jeremy arguing the unfairness of Michael’s tutoring assignment. If Michael was hooked up to a lie detector and interrogated about how he felt about it all, he would say that combining Jeremy’s constant anxiety with an already delicate situation _may_ not have been the best idea on anyone’s part. (Hey, as far as he knew, it wasn’t a sarcasm detector!) 

“You were gonna say my Christine, weren’t you?”

Michael’s seen about twenty different shades of red someone can turn, from porn-flushed pink to white-dad-sunburn red, and Jeremy just turned all of them at once.

“N-no! Whatthehell,Michael,thatwouldbestupidbecauseIdon’teventalktoherallthatmuch-”

“Calm down, Jere, _maryosep_! It’s cu- sweet of you that you like her that much to call her yours…”

“Really?”

Jeremy turned toward Michael, this half-hopeful beam on his face that squished his freckles farther into his cheeks, his eyes the brightest light in his smoke-hazy basement aside from the flickering television, which created a halo around his thin features, like some kind of _panaginip_ …

Fuck, he was in too deep. Honestly, he was lucky Jeremy was bad at math right now, if Jeremy was Christine’s tutor for the semester, both of them would be dying right now instead of just Jeremy. 

“Yeah, of course! Would your fav-wit pewson ever lie to you?”

Jeremy giggled and replied, “Didn’t you tell me that gummy worms were made of chopped-up beetle bits when we were eight?” “Ok, we all made mistakes when we were eight! This is coming from the kid who kissed Brooke Lohst behind the playground after eating a handful of dirt, so don’t kinkshame me over here!” Michael giggled and tried to play-slap Jeremy, but hit his own bag of Spicy Cheetos instead, sending them soaring up, up, up over their heads and directly… into Jeremy’s box of chicken nuggets.

“Wow, Michael, no need to show off your gorgeous reflexes and poison my precious chicky nuggs in the process!”

Oh lord, if only he could kiss this beautiful boy’s beautiful smirk off his _maddeningly_ beautiful face. Instead, he resorted to a challenge: one Jeremy could never resist.

“Well, if I have such gorgeous reflexes-” Michael crunched up a Funyuns bag and slam-dunked it into the creeper trashcan “-I’m sure you’ll be glad to have me whoop your ass in Attack on Trust!”

“Is that so? Boot up that Cube and lemme get to work finding a paddle for your BUTT!”

The GameCube power on light flickered on and Michael and Jeremy’s hands settled around the time-worn grooves in their respective “Player One” and “Player Two” controllers, comfortably squinting at the polygonal graphics dancing across the box TV. 

They relaxed into their usual groove, racing through gunfight after gunfight, thumbs moving fast, faster than the computer’s blips of electric counterswipes, one hand in a half-empty bag of Dorito dust and the other wielding an AK-45 and a smoke grenade simultaneously to ward off against the incoming Intelligence raid. Bombs hailed shrapnel, cried debris, and all they would do was grit their teeth and mash out a triple combo that would leave their bosses in smoulders. Minutes ticked by, then hours, as Jeremy and Michael slowly ate their way through the week’s supply of snacks and beat level after map after wave of enemy.

Jeremy turned to Michael during a slow cutscene, sipping a Crystal Pepsi. “Hey-” _slurppp_ “-what do you think about the plot so far? Like, it kinda seems more realistic than the the other Attack games, don’t’cha think?”

Michael chewed on his boba pearls, considering the question. “Nah, it’s… how are you supposed to believe that Eoa would sacrifice herself to Intelligence so the Raiders could escape, only to have her come back through Jairus? I mean, that’s just messed-up writing! And don’t even get me started on the romantic subplot, sus! Whoever thought Liiels would be anywhere near attracted to Wes is gonna get it from me and the 5000 other Liiels/Sares shippers pretty damn quickly-”

“No, no, I mean like…” Jeremy squeezed his eyes in concentration, as if trying to spit the words out. “If someone were to do this in real- real life, no one would really blin-blink- blink an eye. Aren’t rebe-be-bellious s-spies go-goin-going over e-enemy lines fo-for the ca-cause s-same shit as all-alwa-always?” 

That’s a strange way of putting that, he thought. Unless…

“Jeremy, what are you trying to say?”

Jeremy hit ‘pause’ in the menu and looked Michael in the eye. “I was thinking-”

“That’s always dangerous.”

Jeremy proceeded to flush pink and screech incoherently. “ _Shut_ _up_! As I was saying-” Jeremy glared at Michael, who just smirked and waved for him to continue, “-I was thinking about how, since you’re tutoring Christine, and since… well, yanno, you could kinda sorta tellll meeee what she says about me?”

Oh no. Ohhhh no nono no no. Michael was already putting himself through hell just looking at Jeremy right now with his anime puppy-dog eyes and the slightest hint of a pout, there was no way-

“Please, _habibi_?”

-ohh fuck, that boy was good. Michael may have had no idea what that nickname meant, but he certainly melted whenever Jeremy said it in that honey-soft croon like some ‘20s jazz soloist in a  
dark speakeasy, singing just to him. Besides, what harm could it do? Christine was a nice girl, she probably liked Jeremy, it was going to happen eventually. What could he do against fate?

“Sure, Jere, of course! I mean, it’s not like we’ll have anything else to do, right?” 

Jeremy lit up and bounded over to Michael, leaping into his embrace like a sugar crazed puppy. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! Omigod, I can’t wait, isn’t the first tutoring session Tuesday…”, and on and on until he finally pried himself off so they could finish the Insurrection level. 

Michael didn’t win a single battle afterwards.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 _420whatchasmokin_ has added _Bi bi bi_ to a Private Chat

420whatchasmokin: r i ch h ELP

Bi bi bi: what now

Bi bi bi: Im trying to do APUSH and trig hw so this better be an emergency

420whatchasmokin: i

420whatchasmokin: jeremy

420whatchasmokin: akgkrdggdgllidhlhj

Michael closed the chat window on his laptop just as Whitney Houston began “ **Ooooh, I wanna dance with somebody…** ” from his phone across the room. Usually he would answer Jeremy’s texts the moment they came in, but he would just have to wait- for the good of Michael’s sanity.

Bi bi bi: oh shit

Bi bi bi: what happend

420whatchasmokin: he fgukjdtjh asked me to like,,, spy on christine and tell him what she says about him during tutoring

Bi bi bi: wha

Bi bi bi: hes a junior not an eighth grader

420whatchasmokin: ik i s2g

Bi bi bi: hold on

Wait, what? Anything Rich was planning, it couldn’t end well (especially after the Club Penguin Incident of ‘15) so Michael was praying that it just didn’t involve public embarrasment or shaving cream.

 _Bi bi bi_ has added _rolanwiththehomies_ , _im_so_lohst, bemyvalentine_ , _420whatchasmokin_ , and _jakeyd_ to a Group Message

Bi bi bi: we gotta help michael

Bi bi bi: c c cmon

im_so_lohst: jake step up ur user game

jakeyd: frick off

bemyvalentine: ok lets pretend were actual adults and figure out why rich added us all 

bemyvalentine: richard?

Bi bi bi: michael is in a crisis 

Bi bi bi: everybody know canigula

jakeyd: !!!!!!

jakeyd: shes in like,, half my classes

rolanwiththehomies: womens choir and trig

bemyvalentine: chemistry and trig

im_so _lohst: AP english

Bi bi bi: ok 

Bi bi bi: so our resident Heere,,,, likes her

im_so_lohst: oh shit

jakeyd: whoops

rolanwiththehomies: michael u ok?

420whatchasmokin: ill be fine guys no worries

bemyvalentine: if u need chocolate or a ride or sad music or just an ear to scream in 

bemyvalentine: the chat is here

420whatchasmokin: thank u 

420whatchasmokin: :but ill be ok

Michael laid his phone screen-side down and stared in the mirror above his dresser, his reflection not quite meeting his eyes. He stared for a moment and let himself wander, farther, farther. 

_What did you think would happen_ , his mind whispered back. _How did you think this would end, with you and him riding your PT Cruiser into the sunset? You know how this ends. You know how this would end, you know how this is **supposed** to end. The boy and the friend like each other, sure, but then the boy meets his girl and the friend falls to the wayside. Maybe he gets a pretty little background character for his troubles. But there’s nothing about you he could love like that_. 

_You thought he would **want** you?_

_Heh._

_You’re stupider than I thought._

**Author's Note:**

> heyo!! hope yall enjoyed it even tho random ass shit was flying like,,, directly out of left field
> 
> Hay nako- sigh, for crying out loud; a general term of resignation  
> maryosep- Mary and Joseph; like saying "Jesus!"  
> panaginip- a dream  
> sus- Jesus; an interjection  
> habibi- T B D *insert rihanna meme here*
> 
> come scream at me about musicals on Tumblr @tiny_gay_boona_lovegood  
> I'll try to post a chapter about once a week but PSATS and everything else will kick my tired ass occasionally so,,,


End file.
